Although introduced not so long ago, the sms-billing service has been coming to the fore among the well-known and trustworthy payment methods. What is the reason for its growing popularity?

It’s pretty easy to explain by turning to any customer’s psychology: they want to get goods and services quickly, safely and not having to go through a number of sophisticated steps. SMS-billing meets all these requirements providing security along with mobility. No need to expose the credit card details, no need to wait for the transaction to be completed – with sms-payment you get what you want instantly, no need to think about cash – short messages are relatively cheap, and you take these expenses as a part of your monthly telephone bill (which is also an important psychological aspect).

This payment method is convenient and beneficial not only for consumers (site members in our case), but also for vendors. First of all, if you are on the second team, it gives you an opportunity to make the subscription for your site easier and more affordable. Imagine the situation with a Free member, who receives an offer from another user to chat tête-a-tête, but his membership does not include the private messaging service. Most people being in his shoes would prefer paying only for this particular feature (by pressing a few buttons on their mobile device and getting instant access to the desired service) as opposed to purchasing the monthly membership through one of the online payment providers, which would take more time, trouble and funds. Well, I would… as well as the major part of the European countries’ population. It does not mean that sms-payments have to be a substitute for your traditional membership plans, but they can be a great add-on to the process of monetizing your online dating business. A simple calculation shows that depending on the number of your site members and the fee you set up for the site services, you could get hundreds to thousands dollars daily on top of income from subscriptions.

Representing a well-known software company – which is SkaDate – I can’t help saying a few words about how we follow the sms-boom tendency developing new features for our community script and dating software. SkaDate 7 dating software programmers introduced a number of new useful features for members, including the sms-billing. For now it does not cover a wide range of site services: only ‘hot list’ and ‘24-hour trial membership’. We are studying the response of our audience (since our product is mostly USA-oriented) in order to decide if we should go ahead with expanding this feature. But in case you decide to be on the pacesetters team offering the sms-billing service on their sites to show all its advantages to the members, SkaDate team will gladly help you with this. There are 2 world-famous sms-payment providers already integrated into our script: DaoPay and Zong. So to customize the software for adding more items into the list of site features paid by sms will be a lot easier (since the sms billing system itself is already present in the program). You could modify the script by yourself (if you have enough coding knowledge), or leave that to our high-skilled developers team. Another option is visiting the SkaDate Certified Specialists website – the guys who know the product really well and provide high quality assistance on any script modifications.

Logically, we have come up to the moment, where I should start speaking about the disadvantages of using sms-billing for your online venture. One is that this payment method is yet to strike root in the USA, where people still prefer tried-and-true PayPal, CCBill and Authorize.net… And for now I can’t think of any more cons, so if you have thoughts on this aspect – you are most welcome to share them by leaving the post comments.

I am looking forward to reading your responses!

Best wishes,
Irene

Today I am going to cover two major things we have for you. The first thing is about the new build of SkaDate dating software and community script – SkaDate 7.1081. This build contains new features, improvements and minor fixes. SkaDate 7 developers prepared the following interesting features for SkaDate license owners:

XML Sitemap automatic generator. Now SkaDate 7 dating software will be more search engine friendly due to the XML sitemap which will be automatically generated each time users create profiles, forum topics, blogs, photos and etc. You just need to submit your SkaDate web site’s XML site map to Google via Webmasters tools (Google webmasters). This XML Sitemap will help Google, Yahoo and other search engines to crawl and index your web site consequently you get more positions in search results.  Read more about XML Sitemaps.

SMS billing. SkaDate 7 dating software and community script now has sms billing. This is a long-awaited feature. SkaDate 7 supports the following SMS billing payment providers: DaoPay.com and Zong.com You get an account at one of the mentioned sms billing payment providers and your members can pay for these services: Hot List (profiles at the sidebar) and 24 hours trial membership. We think to develop other services for sms billing but a bit later. This feature will help you to increase your revenue through getting real-time payments for your web site’s services from your members. A number of customers prefer to pay for online services by sms and not to share their credit card information. You may reach additional number of customers from your target audience. Try out SkaDate 7 dating software Demo

Profile view customization feature has been improved. Now you may easily change the color of your profile background or customize the background with a picture.

Classifieds are now available in SkaDate 7. Your members can easily advertise their services, sell things, post jobs in the section for classifieds. Other members can add bids and add comments to posted classifieds. It’s a useful feature to interest your members and involve them into social networking and even help them to earn money while being your web site’s members. You will find Classifieds at SkaDate 7 Demo http://www.skadate.com/demo/classifieds.php

Mail system and Cron improvement. We changed the priority of mailing letters to users in SkaDate 7. Now welcome and verification letters will be sent at high priority. As for mass mailing and activity scheduler letters they will be sending every 30 minutes.

3 new cool templates are available in this build plus we adjusted old templates to IE-7. Check them here.

Second thing is about the changes in pricing for SkaDate additional licenses, prices for design integration and designing a unique template.

Design integration price has been reduced from $1000 to $400. Designing a unique template price has been also reduced from $3000 to $1000. We reduced the prices due to the simplicity of the new way of template integration introduced in this SkaDate update. You can have a unique design from SkaDate designers or integrate your design – now it’s even more affordable!

Discounts for SkaDate 7 dating software packages. Now if you buy additional license of SkaDate 7 dating software solution or managed solution you get discounts. Here are the discounted prices for additional SkaDate dating software packages:

I guess it’s enough for now. Our technical team works hard and in the next build will be available one more important feature for social networking and dating web sites – groups. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to leave your comments.

Thank you for your attention and consideration.
Regards, Tim.